Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (51 page)

The noise in the arena changed in pitch, making Owen look up. They all turned and watched as the slaughter at the other end gave way to a small group of survivors forming a tentative coalition force against the three newcomers who had won the fickle crowd’s favor. The men spoke with each other, one man leading with gestures, working out a strategy and not even bothering to conceal it. There were nine men left. Nine experienced pit fighters against the three of them. The men before them spread out more, coming steadily closer, raising their various weapons. All at once, then. That was their plan. Kill the newcomers and then battle it out among themselves.

“I need to get into that booth,” Nora told Owen.

She and Shade made a stand before Owen, brandishing their swords.

“You’ll die,” he said.

“I’ll die,” Nora said bluntly as she frowned at Shade. A thought had just entered her mind. Now it was lodged there like a tick. She looked back at Owen, who had followed her gaze. His mind was already working at high speed. His eyes had that distracted look they always got when he was puzzling over something. “You stay alive.”

“Killing the queen won’t necessarily ensure we stay alive.”

“The booth, Owen. How?”

“Er…guys?” Shade nudged Nora.

The men were coming closer in tight formation.

Nora heard Owen sigh as she sighted on a target: a burly man with an iron mask pulled over his face, a longsword in both his hands and his chest uncovered but for a guard of leather over his heart. Idiot. Brain must be cooked already in this heat, and on top of that he wore an iron mask.

“I need time,” Owen said.

Shade remained standing at Owen’s side as Nora ran forward, hearing the cry of the crowd thunder around her. Her man had a companion just behind him, a man with more armor and a long spear that he stabbed at her.

Nora rolled and rose behind the man with the spear. The man in the iron mask held his sword high above his head. It came down slow. Too slow. She slashed her blade over his naked stomach and stepped around the dying man to push him forward onto his companion with the spear, like a living shield. Or a dying shield, anyway. The spearman recoiled in surprise at his mate’s sudden death, and the weight of the body pulled the spear downward. She hacked down into the spearman’s throat. Blood wet on her hand, she gripped her hilt tighter.

The fighter behind him was a lithe man with a halberd that he stabbed at her deftly. She let him, sidestepped the blow that would have run her through, and grabbed the wooden shaft, yanking it around as she spun toward the next man. The halberd man didn’t let go, though. He pulled his weapon back to take it from her grasp and stab at her again. She let it go suddenly, and he punched the iron tip deep into another man. Nora ran over the strong wooden beam of the halberd and killed its wielder with one fell stroke.

His warm blood spattered against her face and onto her lips. His head was gone from his shoulders and his body toppled over, still gripping the wooden shaft, tugging the impaled man to his death.

Over the roar of the crowd, she blinked the sweat out of her eyes and took a breather.

A thud of wood on wood caught her attention, and she turned again to see Shade and Owen. They were in trouble. Two of the fighters had large circular shields and, after a moment deliberating, seeing the slaughter, they had changed their plan and were now forming a makeshift shield wall. A whoop arose from the crowd. Enough veterans of the wars had been in shield walls to recognize what was happening down in the arena.

The two shield men rallied, and behind them crouched two spear fighters. Four against Shade, who stood tall, one man dead at his feet.

“Nora,” he called, licking the sweat from his upper lip. He shielded Owen with his free arm and they both withdrew a few steps to the edge of the death pit.

She looked around in the sand while keeping an eye on the man advancing toward her. There! She rammed Diaz’s sword hard into the blood-red sand and ran over to one of the death-pit victims. A net thrower, he hung on a stake through his back, his mouth a perfect O. She grabbed his net and a small circular shield that lay close by.

The crowd laughed at her mistake as she straightened, holding the small shield by the wooden pommel inside instead of putting her forearm through the leather hoops. In her other hand she held the net and let it drag behind her. Give them a show. Well, this was the show of the dumb girl who had just made a terrible mistake. She watched the fighter come closer and she retreated. The gap between her and Owen was getting ever wider. Her breast band clung to her skin with sweat and blood. It itched. She rolled her shoulders, but that didn’t help.

The body of a man lay behind her. She banged her heels against his dead arm and slipped, losing balance, nearly dropping the shield. The fighter roared and jumped at her. He was fast, faster than she had expected. She distributed her weight and threw the shield at his face. It smacked into his nose with ice-cold precision, cartilage breaking under the impact. Howling and blinded by the gush of blood, he clutched his face and staggered, leaving a free line of sight for her to throw the unused net away. She reached for the hilt of a sword still embedded in the body behind her and swished the blade in a graceful arc.

Owen yelped behind her. Nora swiveled around. Shade was moving away from her, keeping ahead of the shield wall, knocking the spear tips away with the sword. He kept Owen behind him always, but her brother had taken a thrust and now bled onto the sand from a cut just above his knee. The crowd boomed.

Nora turned around to see the broken-nosed man hurtling toward her, a spear in his hands.

Good, he was angry. Really angry.

She dodged his first thrust, then feigned retreat, showing him her back and legging it over the sand as fast as she could. He howled and ran after her, blood streaming down his face. The shield wall moved as the spear warriors tried to catch a glimpse of what was going on behind them. They should see a young, blood-spattered girl running at them in a last desperate attempt to reach her friends; behind her, a battle-hardened pit fighter looking for vengeance. Maybe a few seconds ago they would have turned around to face her. But now, having drawn blood and sensing weakness, they felt confident enough not to bother. One of them jabbed his spear at Shade’s head, laughing. They could smell terror, they could smell defeat, and they could nearly taste their own victory.

But Nora didn’t stop. She didn’t break her stride to slow down or to curve around the shield wall in front of her. She just ran on and the broken-nosed man closed in behind her, leveling his spear. One of the spear warriors turned his head as he heard them approaching, but he was too late. Nora jumped up, her foot firm against his hip. She stepped onto his shoulders next and then used his helmeted head as her springboard.

An eerie silence hung in the air with her. The crowd inhaled.

Her head was upside down as she turned in the air to land on her feet. She watched the dawning realization on the broken-nosed man’s face as he tried to stop but couldn’t. He slammed his spear straight through the unprotected back of one of his teammates. Her own spear warrior banged his helmeted head against the shield man in front of him, and for a moment, a precious moment before she landed, she saw the shield wall open as that man lost his balance. Shade saw it, too, and stabbed down hard into the opening.

Then Nora landed in front of the shield wall and rammed her sword into the face of the broken-nosed man, pulled the blade out of his shuddering body, back-swung, and hacked down at her human catapult. He died as Shade killed the last shield man. And then it was over.

She stood beside Owen and Shade once more, sweating, tired, and thirsty. But alive. Yes, very much alive while there was death all around them.

The arena filled with the sound of silence. For a moment, all she could hear were the singing breaths the three of them were gulping. Then she raised her sword high above her head, toward the booth of the queen. As though the crowd had been waiting for her signal, a cacophony of sound washed over them from the rows of the spectators.

“So?” Nora asked Owen.

He nodded and picked up a spear from the fallen men around them. He ran a few steps despite his leg wound and hurled the spear at the wall underneath the booth. The long shaft shivered but held in the wall. The queen flinched with surprise. The crowd went wild. Guards stepped out of the shadows to protect their queen. Shade and Nora jogged to where Owen was standing, Shade carrying another spear in his free hand.

“Spears,” Owen panted. “Use them.”

“Crazy,” Shade said breathlessly, pulling his arm back to hurl his spear at the wall. It thudded into the stone a notch higher than Owen’s.

“Yes,” Owen agreed, wiping his face free of sweat.

That was why it would work. Maybe. Nora nodded. The wall was still pretty high. She visualized herself climbing it, visualized falling down and breaking a leg, then falling onto the spikes in the death pit below in several versions. She shuddered. Enough visualizing. She stared at Diaz’s sword planted halfway between herself and the wall to the queen’s booth. One goal. One direction.

The noise from the crowd grew even louder, so that the three of them had to cover their ears. Nora looked up and saw commotion in the rows. Guards were herding the spectators out of the arena. The show was over.

Or rather, it was beginning. Suranna was clapping her hands.

S
ilence fell in the arena
once more so that all Nora could hear was the queen’s steady clapping.

“Well done,” she called, and her voice rang out loud and clear. “Very well done. You killed a group of imbeciles, to the excitement of the masses who wagered on their deaths. Yes, your master must be proud of you. However,” Suranna carried on, after flashing a smile at Diaz behind her, “maybe he isn’t. Maybe you should fight a real opponent to prove yourself.”

“Here it comes,” Nora said quietly to Owen.

“What?”

“Remember I said you mustn’t die?”

“I remember.”

“I mean it. I can’t win against Diaz. I’m not getting out of here alive, Owen.”

“Stop saying that,” he said.

Suranna clapped her hands together twice. When she spoke next, her voice was deeper, more guttural. She sang a sentence in the language of Shinar. Nora didn’t get much except the word “Brisin.” She glanced sideways at Owen, his lips working the words around to translate. He looked up, astonished.

“She just said…”

“I got the gist.”

They both turned to look at Shade, who blushed then paled.

“What?” He grinned, flashing his teeth.

His eyes darted to and fro and he stumbled backward as though drunk, swaying his arms, brandishing his sword wildly. Suranna repeated the sentence, raising her arms, and Shade touched his head and fell to a knee, groaning. Owen moved toward him instinctively, but Nora held him back. She clutched the fighter’s sword tighter and looked over her shoulder back to where Diaz’s sword still stood upright in the sand. She should have seen this coming the moment she recognized Shade walking into the arena. Clair-fucking-voyant. She would have wished for Diaz to come down so she could at least hurt him before he took her out. But Shade? Fuck. It seemed she’d never have a normal relationship, ever. Shade shook his head like a dog shaking himself free of water. He rose and his eyes seemed broken. He nodded and answered his “Myvar” in their own tongue.

“Er…I think he’s not quite himself,” Owen said as Nora pushed herself in front of him, sword raised. “Nora, put the weapon down.”

“Fat chance.”

“It’s a method of mind control. He’s been conditioned to—”

Shade bowed low to the queen and turned to Nora and Owen, sword raised too.

“I don’t think that matters now, Owen,” Nora said, licking her lips in vain. She stepped backward, trying to get closer to Diaz’s sword.

“Actually, I think it does. You see, the Living Blade can only be—Nora!” Owen tugged at her sword arm. “Put your weapon down. It’s Shade. What are you going to do? Kill him?”

Oh gods, please don’t make me do that. Not in front of Owen.

“Depends on what he does next,” she said out loud.

Shade said something; his sword tip didn’t waver.

“He says disobedience is not an option,” Owen translated.

“Fine. The hard way, then. I really like you,” Nora said slowly to the approaching Shade. “But if you touch Owen, I will kill you. Translate, Owen, in case he missed that.”

Owen stepped up and opened his mouth. Nora struck her brother over the head with the hilt of her sword. He fell into the sand out cold, and she crouched down by his side, feeling for his pulse. It was steady. The skin behind his ear had broken open, and the wound bled freely. Shade moved awkwardly toward them.

“Don’t,” she told him and held up a hand.

“For the life of your brother, what would you give me?” It was Shade’s voice, but not the way he talked. The melody was wrong. Nora glanced up at the booth. Shade was nothing more than a mouthpiece.